


A Comforting Hand

by onereyofstarlight



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22446583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onereyofstarlight/pseuds/onereyofstarlight
Summary: Scott has a nightmare and Grandma Tracy is there.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	A Comforting Hand

Grandma Tracy had been a mother since before she had first held her eldest child in her arms. She had kissed scraped knees, changed wet bedsheets, held her children tight to chase the nightmares away. And she found that when her children were grown, when Jeff’s nightmares were no longer vague terrors that she could scare away with a hug in the night, but concrete fears that reflected the worst moments in their life, she fell back on what she knew best and became a second mother to five young boys. She had a different name, ‘Mom’ no longer, but she knew her role well. She knew what her eldest grandson needed when she was called to his bedside by his strangled yell, still shivering in blankets covered in sweat.

She glanced back at Alan, staring wide-eyed, and Virgil, who had coming running as soon as he had heard his brother’s cry. “I’ll handle this,” she’d said and nodded approvingly as Virgil tugged his youngest brother away. The pedestal an eldest sibling perched upon was not something to be upended lightly.

She sat on the edge of his bed and gently stroked his forehead, hoping the light touch would be enough to stir him. She remembered how in the early days this was all the comfort Scott would allow himself, mourning and feeling the weight of responsibility for four younger siblings and a father too wrapped up in his own grief to reach out to his eldest boy.

“Scott?” she called softly, heart as twisted up in emotion as the sheets on his bed.

Scott kept muttering as he tossed his head one way then another, seeming to shrink away from her touch.

“It’s time to wake up, Scott,” she said firmly. “You hear me? It’s time.”

A strangled moan arose from the bed, cut off into a gasp as Scott shot upright. He looked wildly about the room, muscles tensed and ready for flight.

“It’s Grandma,” she said, keeping her voice soft. “Just your old Grandma.”

Recognition bled into his eyes as he stared at her. His breathing was still laboured but he drank in the sight of her, a symbol of safety and comfort and _home_.

“I’m not,” he said, then cleared his throat. “We’re on the island?”

“Sure are, kiddo.”

“Are they…” His voice faltered in the darkness. “Grandma, you’d tell me if there was something wrong, right?”

Grandma Tracy had sat by many bedsides in her time. She knows how a nightmare can warp reality, knows the uncertainty of truth in the moments that follow. She knows how to create a firm foundation for her boys.

“What do you think is wrong, Scotty?”

“Dad’s gone, isn’t he? We couldn’t save him?”

Sometimes, however, she forgot how painful the foundation of reality actually was.

“Yes, Scott,” she told him, as though her own heart weren’t torn in two each time the truth was spoken.

“What about the others?”

“Everyone is safe,” she told him. “See for yourself.”

He struggled to sit up as she pulled up the security feeds around the villa.

“Look honey,” she said swiping through. “There’s Gordon safe outside, Kayo and Virgil and Alan are all in the kitchen together. Brains is down in the hangar.”

“And John?”

“John is just fine, sweetheart,” she said stroking his hair back. “He’s in his room on Thunderbird Five, see?”

“Are you sure?” he asked urgently, staring at the little red dot flashing on the screen. “He was so scared and I couldn’t get to him, Grandma.”

“Yes,” she said firmly. “Leave him be.”

“But how do you know?”

Grandma Tracy sighed and pulled him close. “I know he’s safe because I trust him to tell us if he’s not. Have a little faith in your brother.”

The crease between his eyes reappeared as Scott warred between his nightmarish conjurings and an instinctive need to listen to his Grandma as she swept her hand through his hair, protective and safe and full of a love that could envelop his fears and cut them down to size.

He leaned forward and Grandma Tracy caught him with a hug before he could curl in on himself and shut the world away for a while. Her arms curled around him and she held his head gently as Scott focused on breathing through his fear.

It was Scott who first taught her the difference between comforting her children and her grandchildren. Her children had needed someone to fight alongside them, to trap the monsters and chase them away. Her grandchildren needed _her_ , steadfast in love and unwavering in her faith. They had needed a constant in their life and she had ensured that it was that she would always be there for them.

She held Scott tightly and ignored the tears he hid as he pressed his eyes into her shoulder, murmuring nonsense just as she did when he was a baby, a toddler, a child. His anxieties may have been larger and scarier than he could have conceived of then but that same reassurance was a comfort to him now as an adult.

“I’m not going anywhere, Scott, I’m not letting you go just yet.”

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from Tumblr, originally posted on 14/1/20
> 
> Thank you for reading :)


End file.
